Starting up my new trusty friend the iPad to record something with Garageband this morning, (a lil piece of a tune that just popped into my head that I did not want to loose) I found all of the apps that I had purchased or downloaded from the Apple app store would not launch. The icon would move and the screen would go black for a part of a second and then nothing. So the guitar was set aside and a trawl in iOS forums began. Needless to say I have pretty much now forgotten what it was that I had come up with before grabbing the tablet😦.

Anyway, the forums were helpful somewhat, in that they eventually guided me towards the right direction, but none of the solutions for this issue discussed what the problem was exactly. There are however a lot of: “well I tried everything and after doing …. it suddenly start working”. While some of the solutions I found were teaching me tricks on the iPad, like removing apps from memory, doing a hard reboot etc., most of the “…” were various process for removing and reinstalling apps via wifi or 3G (not iTunes they said). I was desperate and decided to try this. I use iTunes to install apps and decided to go that route even though the posts said not to. There it was that I hit on the issue my own: “I just tried … and it start working” and I did not have to remove any apps. For me it had to do with Authorization (I think). I did get a new app from the iTunes store, but then before doing much else, iTunes start complaining that my desktop machine was not authorized to play content purchased with this machine. It had always been before, and I do not know what could have changed the status of the machine but it was so. Reauthorizing the machine or in iTunes eyes authorizing it at all, as it thought it had never been, did the trick. After that all my apps were fine again.

I do not know how it happened but something during a sync caused the machine or my apple account to forget about the connection between these two machines.

So before deleting and reinstalling apps etc. try syncing with iTunes, and choosing the Store menu

and either deauthorize and authorize or authorize as needed, then see if you can use your apps again. If it is still not working, then hit the iPad forums and start installing or reinstalling apps, or find your own “I just did … and it start working” process (and let me know via comments what your “…” was for next time please)